Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
January 9, 1822
Primary Source Reference:
Poulson's American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 9 Jan 1822
Notes:
Given the date of this acquisition, it is possible that the skull was from a specimen brought back from the Long Expedition by Titian Ramsay Peale and Thomas Say. (Peale's pencil sketch of a skunk is pictured here.) The word polecat does not appear in the published Account of the expedition. This animal was probably the striped skunk the expedition encountered and which Say named Mephitis putorius (now Mephitis mephitis). The Account reported that "The flesh of the skunk we had sometimes dressed for dinner, and found it a remarkably rich and delicate food" (Edwin James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819 and '20: By Order of the Hon. J.C. Calhoun, Sec'y of War: Under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long, vol. 1 [Philadelphia, 1823], p. 180)
Peale's Museum had several specimens. In the 1796 Scientific and Descriptive Catalogue, Peale listed both a "Skunk or Polecat (Chinche, Buff.)" and a "Skunk (Viverra nigra)" (pp. 36-37). Richard Harlan, in Fauna Americana, p. 70, identified the species as Mephitis americana, the polecat of Kalm (Voyage, p. 452), and the skunk of the Americans, and referred to "Several prepared specimens in the Philad. Museum, Nos. 65, 649, &c." / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3194402
Charles Willson Peale's account of trying to rid a cadaver of a polecat of its offensive smell in 1798 is in Autobiography, Selected Papers, 5: 263.
John D. Godman described and illustrated the skunk (which he called Mephitis Americana) based on the "several specimens" in the Museum in his American Natural History. Part I. Mastology, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1826-1828), 1: 211-219 and plate following p. 212.
Richard Harlan (1796-1843), M.D., was an American paleontologist, anatomist, and physician. He was appointed the Peale Museum's professor of comparative anatomy in April 1821.
Specimen Type:
Skeletons/skulls/bones
Peale's Common Name:
Polecat
Current Common Name:
Striped skunk
Current Scientific Name
Mephitis mephitis
